


The Art of Happiness

by mydogwatson



Series: Virtual Postcard Tales [10]
Category: Sherlock BBC
Genre: Artist Sherlock, M/M, Port Wine and Chocolate, different first meeting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27632929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mydogwatson/pseuds/mydogwatson
Summary: John’s date goes as well as his dates usually do. But he doesn’t care.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Virtual Postcard Tales [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827328
Comments: 41
Kudos: 135





	The Art of Happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings, folks. Hope you are all hanging in. And I hope you will enjoy this bit of fluffy johnlock. I am going to take a hiatus from this series so that I can get in the holiday spirit by doing an Advent series, the title of which is One Fixed Point. By starting work now, maybe I can go a few days into December before falling behind! I hope you will be on the look-out for it.
> 
> Meanwhile, enjoy this and please let me know what you think!

He first saw the young man in front of the National Gallery.

John Watson was not habituated to the museum. In fact, this was his first visit since a school trip as a year eleven. Not that he had anything against art, of course. He quite liked an occasional Constable or, when the mood was on him, a bright and cheery Impressionist painting. But art was usually something he simply stumbled across while living his life. Going somewhere just to look at pictures was just not an idea that occurred to him.

Nor had it today, of course.

Melinda had suggested it and because he was smitten [or, at least, wanted to be smitten, because life was pretty dull otherwise] John had agreed to spend this Sunday afternoon looking at art. He’d even managed to sound rather enthusiastic at the prospect. They arranged to meet in front of the National Gallery at one.

John arrived just after twelve. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, and any excuse to get out of his dismal little flat was more than welcome. He’d dressed carefully in a new blue and white pinstriped shirt, freshly laundered khakis and his best navy blue blazer. All in all, he felt pretty good. A man ready to devote his day to culture and possibly his evening to something else. If he struck lucky.

After a week at the undeniably shabby clinic where he treated runny noses and haemorrhoids, with an occasional knife wound thrown in for variety, the opportunity to simply sit on the low concrete wall and watch the activity filling the plaza that fronted the museum was welcome. The surprisingly perfect weather had brought out a crowd, of course. A colourful, noisy crowd of tourists, families, some of London’s homeless. A juggler dressed as a clown collected stray coins from passersby.

Then his attention was caught by several street artists making chalk drawings on the pavement. One young black man was creating the image of an African queen, resplendent in a rainbow of jewel-like colours. A red-haired teenaged girl in tie-dye was hard at work on...well, he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be, but it was...interesting. And finally, a man who had to be eighty if he was a day, was putting the finishing touches on a blond, blue-eyed Jesus. John admired his ability to kneel on the pavement for so long and wondered if he would be able to stand at the end. Maybe he counted on divine intervention.

John glanced at his watch. Probably an issue with the Northern Line. Weekend service was sometimes shite. No doubt, Melinda would be here at any moment.

Then John looked past the living statue of Charlie Chaplin and saw the artist.

The young man was sitting on the pavement near the stairs that lead down to the square. He was not drawing with chalk on the concrete like the others. Instead, he had a small wooden easel in front of him and he was actually painting. John was a bit intrigued, because that one seemed like a _real_ artist.

Almost without intending to, John stood up and wandered closer to the man.

Well, it could not be denied that he was a bit grubby and not quite as young as John had first thought.

His sweatpants and jacket were, frankly, filthy, as well as covered with paint. His dark, limp-curled hair was shaggy and also dotted with paint. To complete the picture, he was frowning quite ferociously at the canvas, as if it had done him some personal injury. 

John was unaware of how close he had come until the artist raised his head and looked right at him.

And not until much later did he realise how quickly the filthy clothing, the unkempt hair, the off-putting frown had faded into insignificance. He had the unlikely [for him] thought that those eyes were like the palette the artist was holding: containing a multitude of different colours. The grey-green-blue and platinum[?] gaze was, in turn, examining John in such detail that it almost seemed as if the man were planning to paint a portrait.

John had a sudden memory of a girl he had dated, briefly, at uni, an art major. She used to describe in ruthless detail the nude models in her life studies class. How it was necessary to examine the subject in an almost forensic way before putting paint on the canvas. Maybe he had never really understood that, but now that he felt a bit like a corpse on the autopsy table, her words were more meaningful.

He shifted his own gaze down to the easel.

“Wow, that’s lovely,” he said, not intending to speak at all.

“You think so?”

Well, that was just unfair. First, those eyes, weirdly compelling, and now the voice, which made John think, for some reason, of an evening just before his deployment. He’d spent it not with Susie, the barista he’d been dating, but with Duncan, a philosophy graduate student whom he’d met, ironically, in the Starbucks where Susie worked.

“A bit flamboyant,” she had said about Duncan and probably that was true.

Brightly-coloured shirts, a variety of bow ties, ‘John Lennon’ style glasses and hair that changed colour as often as the shirts. But he was funny and smart and John enjoyed his company. So, on that last night, they had sat on the tiny fire escape outside Duncan’s flat, with a bottle of Vintage Port Wine and a ridiculous amount of bittersweet dark chocolate. Later, he could never remember what they talked about during those hours. At some point, they rather crawled back inside and collapsed, John on the lumpy sofa and Duncan in the nearby recliner.

As he fell asleep, John had the thought that some things had gone unsaid between Duncan and himself. What those things were, he could not really imagine. But they seemed important. And with that, he fell asleep.

It was just after dawn when John woke up. He was due at the train station later that morning and he still had to pack and check out of the b&b. He stood at the sink and splashed cold water in his face, swishing it around his mouth. He thought about waking Duncan, but did not, instead just quietly letting himself out of the flat.

John realised that he had not thought about Duncan in a very long time. But the voice he’d just heard made him think of that dark chocolate and the rich port wine.

“Yes, I do think so,” he said, belatedly, in response to the artist’s question.

The water-colour image on the canvas was of the front facade of the museum, but...not quite. The colours were wrong, nothing like reality, but at the same time somehow just right. The very architecture of the building was different, somehow more fluid, almost like a living thing. “I like it,” John insisted.

“Well, now I feel validated,” the artist said drily.

John supposed that he ought to feel a bit offended, but instead he only smiled. “You’re right. I know absolutely nothing about art.”

“Well, as a physician you no doubt have other fine qualities.” With that, the young man turned back to his canvas, studying it carefully, before picking up the brush again.

“I’m John Watson, by the way,” he said. There was no reciprocation.

For the next twenty minutes, John stood there and watched him paint. He thought that it was something he could do for the next twenty hours. Or days.

Or years.

And that thought jolted him a bit. Enough that he thought to check his watch and realise that Melinda was over an hour late.

“I think you have been stood up,” the artist said absently, not even looking at him.

John only hummed in response. The painting seemed to be finished, the last step apparently the scribbling of a signature in the lower right corner. John leaned closer so he could read it. “Shezza?” he said. “That’s your name?”

“Apparently.”

He finally remembered a question he wanted to ask. “How do you know I’m a doctor?”

“I looked at you.”

That was not very satisfactory, but John let it go.

Shezza began to pack his supplies into an over-sized rucksack. When he finished, he picked up the painting and held it out. “Have it, John Watson,” he said.

“What? No, I can’t...” The canvas was thrust into his hands and before he could say anything more, Shezza had turned around and vanished into the crowd.

*

John hung the painting in his dismal flat, over the tv, so that he could look at it easily.

He did not see Melinda again. And it was not Melinda who filled his thoughts.

Every Sunday for the next month, he went back to the National Gallery and waited, but there was no sign of Shezza. Had he not possessed proof, in the painting hanging on his wall, he might well have thought that the whole encounter had been some dream.

*

John was staring at the painting more than the television, but when the reporter mentioned the National Gallery, he switched his attention immediately.

“...authorities say that the art theft ring was broken up by Scotland Yard, with the assistance of a so-called ‘consulting detective’ named Sherlock Holmes. Inspector Gregory Lestrade spoke for the Yard.”

Now John saw the silver-haired inspector step up to the microphone, but paid little attention to what he was saying, instead staring at the figure standing next to him. The hair was free of paint, as was the perfectly tailored black suit. The frown was instead an expression of exquisite boredom and while the tv did not allow for a close examination of the eyes, John knew immediately that Sherlock Holmes was, in reality, Shezza. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Holmes spoke only a few terse words to the reporter, but the voice still stirred something in John that he could not really explain. Something hot and secret. It frightened and excited him at the same time. He made sure to tune in to the late news as well, just to see the story all over again.

*  
The next day was Sunday and although he knew there was no reason to go to Trafalgar Square again, John did not want to sit inside his flat, so he dressed, swallowed some tea and set off. And, yes, he knew it was stupid, but nevertheless he got on the Piccadilly Line and went to Leicester Square. From there, it was five minutes to the National Gallery.

His eyes scanned the scene and after a moment of hesitation, he walked over to the stone wall and sat down next to the man in the black suit and aubergine shirt. They both watched a mime apparently attempting to escape from a box. “It is still a very nice painting,” John finally said, stubbornly.

Sherlock snorted. “I should hope so. My parents paid for years of art classes when I was a child. Along with violin lessons and ballet classes.” There was a pause. “I was a child who needed to be kept busy. Otherwise I might blow up the garden shed. Again.”

John turned his head to hide the smile that appeared, unbidden. “And so now you solve crimes with the police.”

“I solve crimes _for_ the police,” Sherlock Holmes corrected.

Now John could not help the laugh. “So why are you here today? More criminals to catch?”

“No. I actually thought that I might go into the museum.”

John looked at him and saw, surprisingly, something that looked almost like...hesitancy in those damned eyes.

“If you like,” Sherlock said, “I would be delighted to teach you about great art.”

John expected that the other man would be delighted to lecture him on any number of things. Lecturing people was probably his hobby. “Okay,” John said cheerfully. “But my favourite is still your painting.” 

Instead of responding to that, Sherlock merely stood and lead the way up the stairs and into the museum.

John was never sure how much he learned about art that day, but he did learn a lot about one Sherlock Holmes. He was arrogant, unbelievably clever, quick to take offence, quicker still to offend. It was the best afternoon of John’s life.

Which appeared to end when Sherlock received a text as they were perusing some particularly gory paintings, including _Salome With the Head of John the Baptist_ by Caravaggio. Sherlock explained the image as if it were a crime scene. But, abruptly, he stopped to read the just-arrived text and send off a rapid reply. “Lestrade,” he said then. “A double murder in Barking.” He sounded a bit too happy at the news. 

John tried to hide his disappointment. “Oh, okay—”

Sherlock shoved the phone away. “Do you want to come? I could use a medical expert.”

“Really?” John asked skeptically.

Sherlock shrugged. “Well, it’s a good reason for you to be there. And Lestrade needs me, so he won’t argue about it.” There was a quicksilver smile and then John was following the ridiculous man out of the museum and into London.

*

The watercolour of the National Gallery went with John from his dismal flat to 221B Baker Street and then sometime later to a different dismal flat for a terrible three years, before returning once again to Baker Street. And, finally, it hung over the fireplace in a Sussex cottage.

It was still John’s favourite.

**

**Author's Note:**

> Title From: The Art of Happiness by Epicurus


End file.
